The Once and Future Me
By Melissa Pace
Dark Matter meets Girl, Interrupted in this spellbinding psychological thriller about a young woman teetering between two realities.
Virginia November 12th, 1954: A young woman wakes, agitated and confused, on a patient transport bus arriving at Hanover State Psychiatric Hospital. She remembers nothing of her life before that moment, none of the dark things she must’ve seen—and done—to have forged her into such a skilled and cunning fighter.
Once she’s been subdued, doctors explain that she’s Dorothy Frasier, a paranoid schizophrenic, committed by the state to Hanover for treatments they hope will quell her increasingly violent and grandiose delusions. She’s certain they’re wrong—until disturbing visions begin to invade her reality: of a dystopian future where frantic scientists urge her to do whatever it takes to complete “the mission” and save humankind. Convinced it’s Hanover causing the hallucinations, she tells no one, focuses only on escape—
Until there’s a visitor, a man whose loving face and touch she remembers, a man who knows all about her visions because he’s spent years helping her cope with them: her husband, Paul Frasier.
Now she’s sure of nothing, caught between two possible lives. Two realities. Believe in the future, and she might save the world. Believe in her doctors and Paul, and she might save herself. She’s desperate for answers, but to get them she’ll need to harness the darkness inside her, risking her freedom, her mind, and ultimately her life in a harrowing quest for the truth.
My thoughts:
I’m a sucker for a good time travel book, so this one had me intrigued right from the start. I liked the concept, I liked the mystery, and I liked the protagonist’s central goal driving everything forward, but it still left me wanting a little more in the end.
A young woman wakes up disoriented on a transport bus arriving at Hanover State Psychiatric Hospital in 1954, with absolutely no memory of who she is or what her life was before this moment. She has no idea what she must have seen or done to turn her into someone capable of fighting the way she does when the staff try to subdue her. The doctors tell her she’s Dorothy Frasier, a paranoid schizophrenic committed by the state for treatment aimed at controlling her violent, grandiose delusions. She’s convinced they’ve got it wrong, right up until strange visions start of a dystopian future where scientists are begging her to complete some kind of mission to save humanity. Certain the hospital itself is causing these hallucinations, she keeps quiet and focuses only on getting out. Then a visitor arrives who claims to be her husband and says he’s spent years helping her manage these strange visions. From there she’s stuck between two completely different realities, unsure which one is actually true, and unsure which choice might cost her everything.
The author does a fantastic job building atmosphere, especially around the 1950s psychiatric hospital setting. It’s well known that anyone committed for mental health reasons during that era was often subjected to horrific testing and treatment disguised as care, and the book captures that reality well. I also really liked how the story kept me guessing about what was actually real and what wasn’t. That uncertainty is exactly the kind of thing that hooks me in this type of story, and for a good chunk of this book, it worked incredibly well.
I have to be honest though. The first half of this book had me completely locked in, but somewhere around the halfway point, things started feeling repetitive, and I noticed myself checking out a little. I caught myself skimming pages because it felt like the story had stopped moving forward and was just circling the same ideas over and over. That’s a tough thing to admit about a book I was so into at the start, but the momentum just didn’t hold.
Am I glad I read it overall? Absolutely. The concept and the atmosphere alone make it worth picking up. I just wish the pacing in the back half had been tightened up, and I wish the story had offered a few more genuine surprises to match the strength of that opening half. It felt like the book had already shown its best cards early on and didn’t have quite enough left to keep raising the stakes all the way through.
If you love time travel stories with a strong sense of atmosphere and don’t mind a slower back half, this is worth your time. Just go in knowing the second half doesn’t quite match the intensity of where it starts.
